1 | Jobs Jobs PWC REPORT Technology gurus to gain from CEOs’ investment focus BY LILIAN OCHIENG’ @LilianMerab laochieng@ke.nationmedia.com If you are a technology guru, you might just get more attention from your CEO this year than before. The results of a survey conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) suggests that a majority of organisation leaders in Africa plan to invest a lot more in advanced technologies, which they now see as the key vehicle for business growth. The report states that about 87 per cent of these business leaders are working on increasing their investments in, for instance, cloud computing and advanced mobile technology this year. The survey was conducted towards the end of last year. The CEOs interviewed listed mobile applications, use of open data and cloud software, as their main agenda in upcoming boardroom discussions. “Ghanaian and Kenyan CEOs are 94 and 83 per cent optimistic respectively, that technology will help them achieve more revenue growth this year,” declares the report. One of the technologies held highly by CEOs is mobile communication. The immense penetration of mobile gadgets in Africa promises to further ease business processes through the creation of more innovative applications and faster communication regardless of distance. The Financial Times reported that in a seven- year period, mobile phone subscriptions had risen to 475 million from 90 million in sub-Saharan Africa. This has therefore changed the nature of communication and state of banking, commerce and investment in the continent. Though penetration of mobile devices is lower than often reported and connectivity challenges remain particularly high in rural areas, many African CEOs still have confidence that mobile technology is a game changer for the current business manager. The PwC report further says that new innovations, such as mobile banking, have given Africa a strong agility to change. It has exposed organisations to opportunities to thrive in business. CEOs in the region have ambitious goals for this year, with 86 per cent of them planning to increase the amount they spend on staff training on technology. “Mobile tablets and mini computers are a must-have for employees who are always on field and need to report back to their immediate supervisors urgently,” states the advisory leader for PwC Central and Southern Africa, Mr Jacques Louw, in the report. The study states in detail that two-thirds of the CEOs have prioritised data analytics to help them predict trends, and technology to support standardisation and automation of office productivity. They are keen on technologies that can enable them to cut stages that would otherwise make certain processes longer and time consuming. They are also interested in those that allow them to outsource certain functions. One such technology that was repeatedly mentioned by CEOs was cloud computing. CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Study finds the phones almost perfectly designed to disrupt sleep, and in the process, reduce work effectiveness the next day BY CHRISTOPHER BARNES, KLODIANA LANAJ AND RUSSELL JOHNSON office. And now that workers can access email and S websites at any time from almost any location, they can be responsive to professional demands in ways unimaginable just a few decades ago. Customer-centric organisations can remain attentive to clients’ needs around the clock. Time-critical events can be addressed quickly. People can leave their offices without fear of being disconnected from their work. Indeed, many would consider smartphones to be among the most important tools ever invented when it comes to increasing the productivity of knowledge work. Well, think again. New research indicates that greater connectivity comes at a high cost, not just to the employee, but also to the organisation. Using a smartphone to cram more work into a given evening results in less work done the next day. The reason for this is that smartphones are bad for sleep, yet sleep is very important to effectiveness as an employee. That a well-rested employee is a better employee is well established by research. To note just a few recent studies, insufficient sleep has been linked to more unethical behaviour at work, cyberloafing, work injuries and less organisational citizenship habits. Unfortunately, smartphones are almost perfectly designed to disrupt sleep. Because they keep us mentally engaged with work late into the evening, they make it harder to psychologically detach from the most pressing cares of the day so that we can relax and fall asleep. More generally, they encourage poor sleep hygiene, a set of behaviours that make it harder to both fall asleep and stay asleep. Perhaps the most difficult aspect of smartphones to avoid is that they expose us to light, including blue light. Even small amounts of blue light inhibit the sleeppromoting chemical melatonin, meaning that the displays of smartphones are capable of producing this effect. Thus, as researchers, we had good reason to suspect that using smartphones at night would yield negative effects at work the next day. Specifically, we hypothesised that a greater number of minutes spent using smartphones after 9pm would more negatively affect sleep; that this in turn would leave people feeling tired in the morning; and that, as a result, they would be less engaged at work the next day. In other words, using smartphones to squeeze in a bit more work at night would lead to lower engagement the next day at work, through lost sleep as a causal mechanism. To test that hypothesis, we conducted a pair of studies, which will be published in detail in the research journals Organisational martphones are enormously valuable for helping people to fit work activity into times and places outside of the DAILY NATION Friday January 31, 2014 JOB TIP: MAKE YOUR SUCCESS KNOWN Don’t just sit back and whine if your boss is not seeing or feeling your impressive performance or achievements. Find a way to shout about it, either by yourself or with the help of a colleague, so that the boss may obviously notice. Getting ahead in today’s job market RESEARCH | How blue light from mobile devices make you too tired to work the next day Use of smartphone after 9pm could get you fired FILE | DAILY NATION Behaviour and Human Decision Processes later in the year. In our first study, we had 82 mid to high level managers complete multiple surveys per day for two weeks. This entailed “within persons” analysis, meaning we compared each individual’s daily data only to that person’s own data on other days. This allowed us to examine daily effects, unclouded by individual differences. Consistent with our hypotheses, we found that late-night smartphone usage cut into sleep and made people tired in the morning, and that, as a result, they were less engaged at work the next day. In our second study, we had 161 employees Out of the many other common electronic devices in homes, such as television and laptops, smartphones were associated with the most powerful effects against sleep” from a broad variety of occupations complete the same set of surveys, with the addition of late-night usage of television, laptop computers and tablets. The harmful effects of smartphones on sleep and work engagement held even after accounting for these other electronic devices. Indeed, out of all those devices, smartphones were associated with the most powerful effects. Our study adds to a pile of scientific evidence that managers must begin to acknowledge in their work. There are downsides to having employees use CONTINUED ON PAGE 2